Helping 2e Students Cope with and Confront Bigotry (Part I)

As a teenager in the 1960s, I was well aware of distinct divisions in our country and in my extended family over the issues of immigration, race, and religion. I recall many holiday dinners at our home when I entered into animated and heated conversations with relatives who showed me what bigotry looked and sounded like, especially when we talked about the civil rights movement. These discussions provided me the perfect opportunity to express my strong convictions about the importance of equality and justice for all. There is no denying that I was a vocal and opinionated teen who did not hesitate to speak up and share what I had been taught by my parents, my faith leaders, my teachers, and our close family friends who were of a faith different than my own family. I was taught, through personal stories shared at the dinner table, conversations with our Jewish friends, and frequent discussions of the news and history, this one important lesson: Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.

Creating Awareness of the Challenges We Face Today

And now in 2019, there is concrete evidence that divisions in our country and in our families have not been erased or healed by the passage of time. In fact, these fractures remain and in some cases have noticeably deepened. Social media, the 24-hour news cycle, bots and foreign players, misleading or false posts and stories, divisive rhetoric from elected leaders, the demonization of groups of people, the prominence of hate groups — they all play a role in stoking fear and anxiety. The message often boils down to this falsehood: Those who are different are a danger to our country and to our families. One cannot deny that these messages of hate have had a negative impact on all of us — even if we have been lucky enough not to be the targets. However, it is crucial for the welfare of all of our children, including our gifted/2e children, that we become increasingly aware of the implications of any hate-filled rhetoric and actions on our country, our communities and our own family.

Understanding and Supporting Our Gifted/2e Students

This need for adults to address the divisive climate of hate in America and elsewhere in the world is especially important to our gifted/2e population. Dr. Gail Post, a clinical psychologist, writes that while “hate crimes affect all children,” there are multiple reasons for parents and educators to understand the relevance of hate crimes to gifted education. Here are the three reasons she includes in her October 30, 2018, post in her Gifted Challenges blog:

1. Gifted children are highly sensitive: They experience profound sadness and empathy for victims.
2. Gifted children possess a strong sense of fairness and justice: They become outraged when they believe others are not treated fairly.
3. Gifted children represent our future: They need to feel safe … learn from history, understand the meaning of current events and be encouraged to find the solution to the problems we are now facing.

Teaching Our Gifted/2e Children to Have Empathy, Compassion and Courage

One possible idea for addressing and changing the divisive climate of hate might start with the parents, grandparents, educators, and caregivers of our gifted and 2e kids, listening to and reflecting on the opening lyrics of the song that greatly influenced me, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught:”

“You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear, You’ve got to be taught from year to year, It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear, You’ve got to be carefully taught.”

Even though this song was written back in the late 1940s, current research, according to Allison Briscoe-Smith, an expert in diversity issues, indicates that adults tend to “socialize kids to fear difference.” This tendency, Briscoe-Smith adds, is in direct opposition to what we know about children, their brains, their cognitive functioning, and emotional processing (Grant-Thomas, 2019). Briscoe-Smith further states that, “Kids are really organized to make sense of the world according to difference; they are looking for difference. … It’s really on us to teach them that difference and “other” aren’t inherently bad or scary but rather something we can investigate, be curious about, and be in relationship with.” [perfectpullquote align=”left” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]It is crucial for the welfare of all of our children, including our gifted/2e children, that we become increasingly aware of the implications of any hate-filled rhetoric and actions on our country, our communities and our own family.[/perfectpullquote] As the lyrics above suggest, it is the repetition and intentional teaching that drives home the message of hate. But equally important to know, it is the deliberate training within our homes and schools to value differences that can have the opposite effect of opening up the hearts and minds of our children, and developing a sense of empathy and compassion. This point is made by Briscoe-Smith when she remarked that “we must be explicit in helping kids understand that difference doesn’t mean bad; it just means difference.” So in today’s world, according to interviewer Andrew Grant Thomas, we find ourselves “in the midst of an extended period of elevated expressions of explicit bigotry in U.S. political life” (Grant-Thomas, Apr. 28, 2017), it’s important to ask this question: What can each of us, including parents and educators of gifted/2e students, do to foster a sense of openness and respect for peers regardless of race, gender, religion, or gender expression. Here are a few suggestions provided by Maureen Costello, director of teaching tolerance and a member of the Southern Poverty Law Center senior leadership team, when she was interviewed by Grant-Thomas:

1. Have an open mind/sense of being to invite and answer questions about difference
2. Be willing to bring up the topic of difference — noting the existence of difference and building useful and positive narratives in our children’s minds
3. Talk about prejudice and stereotyping
4. Give age-appropriate facts on differences, relationships
5. Share how differences can bring unfair treatment

Briscoe-Smith also shares these reminders:

1. Pay attention to what we say and do as the adults
2. Monitor your reaction to differences and note if you are anxious and nervous or open and flexible
3. Determine if your environment is a “space the provides access to difference” and check to see if you have books that feature different types of people in different roles
4. Take time to identify and teach your children the values of your family through the stories you tell and read to your children and the conversations you have at the dinner table

Additional tips for educators, parents, families and caregivers are included in the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) article titled, “Discussing Hate and Violence with Children” (ADL.org, 2019). The following four tips allow adults to “counter fear and give reassurance” while allowing “children to express how they feel and channel their feelings into positive actions:”

1. Prepare — reflect and analyze your own feelings
2. Listen — show respect and a sense of seriousness to figure out what children might already know and what they might be thinking
3. Be honest — answer all questions clearly and honestly and if you do not know the answer, acknowledge that and then create a plan to get the answer
4. Take action — show children that we “are not powerless in the face of hate,” we do have options, and each of us can do something to contribute to “creating a better world.”

Micah’s Story: Learning to Deal with Bullying and Violence

Fortunately, when we take these steps to teach our children about differences and how to assertively and safely respond to the actions of others, we are teaching them to utilize their sense of empathy, compassion, and courage to bring positive change into their life and the lives of others around them. And when we teach our children about differences, we are teaching them about the fundamental human right that I was taught early on by my parents — the right of everyone to be treated with dignity and respect. This one lesson, which needs to be continually reinforced by parents, educators, and leaders at every level, will also begin to equip our 2e children with the ability to stand up and speak up in the moment to address peer abuse or bullying they witness or experience at school or even at home. It is a sad reality that many of our 2e students find themselves being targeted for peer abuse/bullying — not over matters not related to their race, ethnicity, or religion, but over the individual differences in how they learn or their choice of video games in their free time. This is the case for 10-year-old Micah, whose mother, Carol, recently shared his story with me:

When it comes to gifted kids being bullied at school, there is no shortage of evidence. My son has always known he is different than the other kids. He has been called weirdo, alien, inhuman. Because he is eager to socialize and be one of the boys, he takes it all in stride and brushes off the putdowns.